


Here Be Dragons: the ‘Creator Chose Not to Warn’ Tag Is Useful, Necessary, and, Yes, Ethical

by road_rhythm



Series: fandom meta bullshit [1]
Category: No Fandom
Genre: AO3 Tags - Freeform, AO3 Warnings, AO3's "Chose Not to Warn" Tag, Archived From Tumblr, Essays, Meta, Narrative Surprise, Other, Reading, Tagging Debates, Writing, fandom wank, informed consent, the principle of reading at your own risk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-31
Updated: 2020-01-31
Packaged: 2021-02-25 06:55:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22491910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/road_rhythm/pseuds/road_rhythm
Summary: It's come to my attention that a subset of fandom doesn't like AO3's "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings" (CNtW) tag, and really doesn't like CNtW fics with actual surprises in them. So here is my point-by-point response no one asked for to each of the objections I've seen to CNtW's existence, variations on CNtW's use, and why tagging CNtW does not in fact make you an asshole (but harassing people for it kinda does).
Series: fandom meta bullshit [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2142321
Comments: 32
Kudos: 89





	Here Be Dragons: the ‘Creator Chose Not to Warn’ Tag Is Useful, Necessary, and, Yes, Ethical

**Author's Note:**

> Archived [from Tumblr](https://road-rhythm.tumblr.com/post/190550800968/here-be-dragons-the-creator-chose-not-to-warn).

That is AO3's official description of the "Chose Not to Warn" (CNtW) tag, taken from [the archive's FAQ entry about tags](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tags?language_id=en#tagtypes). Elsewhere, the tag is often compared to a phrase that used to be common in fic headers pre-AO3: "Read At Your Own Risk."

There's an argument I'm seeing a lot of lately, such as in some of the responses to [this Twitter thread](https://twitter.com/kuromantic/status/1220320227403104256): that AO3's CNtW tag is insufficient and shouldn't be an option, and that authors who choose not to warn (tagging accordingly) are irresponsible at best, sadistic at worst.

I disagree a lot.

People have been fighting about this for a while now, and many have already defended the CNtW option more eloquently than I'm about to. My reasons for sounding off anyway are: I feel like it; unsurprisingly, other people's posts are not a perfect match for my views; it seems like a good opportunity to clarify my approach to tagging so that anyone who cares can do what they will with the information; and I'm big mad about this shit.

CNtW is the hero we both need and deserve.

It's the compromise AO3 has brokered between "nobody needs to tag anything" and "everybody has to tag everything." As a compromise, by definition it has drawbacks, but personally, I think it's a pretty good one: it's clear, it's easily filterable, and it protects freedom of expression and a range of reading experiences while also functioning as a tool for readers to protect themselves. And it's _necessary,_ because fandom needs all of those things.

Also, CNtW isn't going anywhere. It's just not. The question isn't whether AO3 is going to get rid of this tag; the only question here is whether it's a groovy development in fandom to call authors who use it everything from abusers to rape apologists to pedophiles.

A disclaimer right up top: as I have written a story tagged CNtW that some readers enjoyed and others were badly upset by, I do in fact have a dog in this fight. Then again, everybody's got a dog in the fight, because everybody's a reader and/or writer with individual needs and personal preferences. If anything, I probably get more intense about this as a reader than I do as a writer, because I quite like my very convenient option to consent to being surprised by a story.

So I am not neutral on this topic, philosophically or emotionally. I see the rhetoric around CNtW as an attempt to control both readers and creators. I think it is disingenuously presented as a crusade for safety and inclusion while ignoring the fact that some of the readers and creators it seeks to control are themselves survivors or living with MHI. In that respect, I see it as a direct outgrowth and symptom of fandom purity culture. All those things mightily piss me off.

Without linking any individual comments, tweets, or posts, I'm going to summarize the arguments I've seen against CNtW tagging, and I'm going to try to be fair about it. It's possible I'll miss something, and it's inevitable my biases will show, but this seems better than dragging a bunch of people into a separate post they haven't asked to have anything to do with, especially when the trend is what I find irksome. If you think I've misrepresented anything, @ away.

* * *

* * *

**#1. I come to fanfic for comfort and familiarity; I don't want to be surprised**

**#2. Warnings aren't spoilers; if your plot relies on "twists" and revealing them detracts from your story, it was a pretty poor story to begin with**

**#3. CNtW is analogous to a label on food that states that the item may contain allergens without specifying which ones**

**#4. There's no such thing as a 'blanket warning'**

**#5. CNtW doesn't help me manage my risk**

**#6. Authors mix up No Archive Warnings Apply with Chose Not to Warn**

**#7. CNtW is overused and a ton of great stories are inaccessible for no good reason**

**#8. CNtW makes it impossible for readers to curate their experiences**

**#9. CNtW is rude**

**#10. Authors CNtW because they know readers avoid tags like MCD and Underage**

**#11. CNtW violates the trust readers place in authors**

**#12. CNtW sends a message to trauma survivors that they're not welcome in fandom and springs 'harmful surprises' on them**

**#13. If you CNtW, you must have no idea what it's like to be triggered**

**#14. Defending CNtW is victim-blaming**

**#15. CNtW makes people antis**

**#16. There's no reason authors who CNtW can't just put their warnings in an endnote**

**#17. This isn't about entitlement; it's about being kind**

**#18. The 'Hide Warnings' site feature makes CNtW unnecessary**

**#19. Fanfic isn't worth hurting real people**

**#20. Fellow fans have the right to express frustration about CNtW**

* * *

or skip to **The Short Version**

* * *

* * *

###  **#1. I come to fanfic for comfort and familiarity; I don't want to be surprised.**

Nothing wrong with that. I also engage in a lot of comfort-reading, and I have no plans to cut back. When I am not in the mood to be surprised, I skip CNtW fics.

But sometimes I _am_ in the mood to be surprised, and so are a lot of other people. When used as a justification for "CNtW shouldn't exist," "I come to fanfic for comfort and familiarity" carries a rider that this is the only correct way to interact with fan content. It's tinged with a certain amount of snobbery, too: "Oh, you want _surprises_ in your fanfic? Don't you know it's Not That Serious? Silly rabbit, fanworks are for kids." It's fine to read fanfic and like it, is the implication—but make sure to be self-aware about how inconsequential it is.

(I'll be coming back to that.)

On the other side of things, people definitely get snobby about readers _not_ wanting to be surprised. I suspect some of the above is a reaction against the perennially bad take that if someone doesn't want to or actually cannot read surprises, it's because they're weak, shallow, lightweight—a special snowflake. We're less likely to encounter people sneering, "just you wait until you discover the _real world"_ in fandom than elsewhere, but it's still a thing. Fuck that, too. There is nothing wrong with liking or indeed preferring predictable stories.

But when it crosses over to insisting anything else is against the rules, my patience runs out.

###  **#2. Warnings aren't spoilers. Surprise isn't necessary/important to a story, because if you're a good writer, readers will still be invested even if they know what's coming. If your plot relies on "twists" and revealing them detracts from your story, it was a pretty poor story to begin with. So if you're not willing to warn for triggers, you're not ready to be a writer.**

This is primarily an aesthetic disagreement, so there's only so much one can do to support or refute either side. To the extent that what's at stake here is whether being surprised is valuable or not, it comes down to whether you value being surprised.

(I've also seen the argument that a Sufficiently Good Writer should be able to surprise readers _even though_ they know what's coming. I agree that that's an effect that often occurs in good writing, but not that it's the same effect as not knowing what's coming, or that not knowing what's coming isn't a worthwhile experience if you want it. Also, for a community that prides itself on offering everybody the opportunity to express themselves because none of us are being paid and we're all just having fun, it's setting the bar a little high.)

Anyway, some folks like surprises. Maybe we're all Philistines, but given the number of people who were ready to burn down the internet over Harry Potter or Endgame spoilers, I'm gonna guess that we're not outliers.

###  **#3. CNtW is analogous to a label on food that states that the item may contain allergens without specifying which ones.**

There's something in that. It's not a perfect analogy: novelty blindfold restaurants aside, people generally don't consider mystery or suspense an integral part of their dining experiences, while many people do find it essential to their reading. But the broader point is that CNtW sacrifices accessibility for something else, whether free speech, narrative surprise, forestalling complaints about insufficient or unclear tagging, or laziness. That's true. A trade-off is being made.

But a story isn't food; nor is it a public space like a library, art gallery, theater, or train station. It is a communication between an author and a reader, sometimes a very personal one. How the story is presented is not incidental to the communication. It is part of it. You can disagree about whether the change is positive or negative or _important,_ but reducing uncertainty by attaching warnings does fundamentally change what's being expressed and how. And you're not entitled to demand that because you think you'd enjoy some percentage of the stories you're currently not sure if you'd enjoy or not.

The better analogue to a library is the Archive itself, and AO3 _has_ done the work to make itself accessible. The contents of the library/archive would not be improved by every author seeking to address every possible reader. Personally, I think James Frey is a douchebag for all sorts of reasons, but not because he writes for an audience that isn't me.

Of course, not everyone who's against CNtW is saying that authors don't have the right to CNtW, just that it makes them assholes if they do. If authors really _cared_ about readers, they'd tag specific triggers. Not tagging is ableist, as good as a "fuck you" to every reader with PTSD. The expectation of detailed content warnings is a mark of progress, and if you turn your back on that, you're no less regressive and selfish than libertarians who whine about ADA compliance.

Broadly, the expectation of content warnings _is_ a mark of progress. It suggests that it's becoming more normal to consider others, especially those with "invisible" disabilities who have historically been stigmatized, marginalized, dismissed, and generally treated like shit because it might be inconvenient to treat them like people. That's a good thing. But I guess solipsism is a hard habit for a species to kick, because so much of the rhetoric around tagging is turbocharged by the assumption that there's exactly one mode of compassionate conduct and the only reason to deviate from it is arrogance. That is predicated in turn on an assumption that everyone works the same way on the inside. These are false premises. As the lovely and talented [@chiisana-sukima](https://tmblr.co/mcVnSEgWmjbcv1UhzwMCVNg) has put it: "different people can experience the world in different, and sometimes even incompatible, ways without anyone necessarily being wrong."

The issue is not that the accessibility conversation has ~gone too far. The issue is people assuming that their needs are the most important ones in the room, or that nobody who's gone through something similar to what they've gone through could possibly have different priorities, and that therefore asserting different priorities is, _de facto,_ dismissive and an act of violence. In simpler terms, the issue is people being assholes, and that has fuck all to do with disability rights.

Choosing not to warn on a fanfic is not trivializing MHI or PTSD or the challenges trauma survivors face. It's just not addressing those realities in exactly the way some fans want—and they don't seem to care much whether the peers making those choices are survivors themselves or not.

###  **#4. A broad warning is not a warning at all.**

Yes, it is.

###  **#5. No. CNtW doesn't help me.**

I'm sorry, because every bone I've got says that contradicting someone else about what helps them or doesn't is rude as hell, but _yes, it does_. It helps you avoid harmful content.

What it does _not_ help you to do is assess and manage risks posed by a pool of potentially harmful content that you still want to engage with. It gives you what you need to protect yourself, but it doesn't give you what you need to access every piece of art you possibly could.

The first one is required by the social contract and common courtesy. The second one really has nothing to do with either of those.

###  **#6. Some authors confuse No Archive Warnings Apply with Chose Not to Warn, with the result that readers walk blindly into triggering subject matter tagged NAWA.**

That legitimately sucks. But the solution is to enforce tagging guidelines, not to try to remove the compromise that exists. Also, even if AO3 scrapped CNtW, NAWA would still exist. I have to think that authors who are paying so little attention that they would swap these two tags would still be confused and inattentive even if one option on the list went away.

To report a fanwork that violates tagging guidelines, go to "Report Abuse" under "Contact Us" at the bottom of every AO3 page:

and [submit an abuse report](https://archiveofourown.org/abuse_reports/new). No, this will not undo the damage done. But it is the system available on AO3. Hopefully the authors who mix up these tags will one day catch a clue. Until then, maybe save your ire for them, not the authors who _are_ telling you "here be dragons."

###  **#7. Many authors overuse CNtW, defaulting to it just because they're lazy or don't want to deal with complaints if someone disagrees with their tagging, with the result that a ton of great stories become inaccessible for no good reason.**

That also kinda sucks (though I submit that not wanting to deal with pissy readers who think you screwed up the tags or indeed just not wanting to get into it [can both be perfectly valid reasons to CNtW](https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/10304632.html)). There is not a great solution to it. Where you know it has occurred, you can of course request the author change the tags, but the problem is that most of the time, you won't know.

The running theme here is that there are in fact things about CNtW that suck. That's the nature of compromises: accepting a certain amount of suckage in a middle ground, because the options on either side suck harder. In this case, the other options would be "tag everything always" or "tag nothing ever." Why "tag nothing ever" sucks is self-explanatory. Why "tag everything always" sucks seems not to be apparent to a growing number of people.

Addressing all the pitfalls of a "tag everything" mandate wants a whole separate post, but off the dome: it would be impossible to agree on how much specificity is enough (it already is); there would be disputes about things like whether something is noncon or dubcon, or major character death or minor character death (there already are); it would make it easier to weaponize the tags system in conflicts ranging from personal vendettas to ship wars; "label everything objectionable" is a great starting point if your hoped-for endpoint is "ban everything objectionable"; ultimately, it isn't even possible, because triggers are personal and there will always be readers who are triggered by things no one could predict and warn for.

Like CNtW, the Graphic Violence tag also asks a subset of readers to turn back. It is also overused. But if I click through on a story with the tag because I've read fifty others that weren't really all that graphic, the story is not improperly tagged if it turns out to be, well, graphic. So this debate is not really about whether ambiguous warnings are acceptable, but what degree of ambiguity is acceptable.

What should be the guideline, then? Community norms? Yeah, okay, that's a good jumping off point. Fandom at large has identified four categories of content as likely to be particularly distressing to readers/listeners/viewers, and these constitute the four major AO3 warnings. Then there's NAWA and CNtW. 

5,459,276 works posted to the Archive in total as of 28 January, 2020…

…of which 1,938,860 (~36%) employ the CNtW tag. (For a more detailed discussion of AO3's Major Warnings stats, go [here](https://lordhellebore.tumblr.com/post/182867872854/on-excluding-readers).)

CNtW is a community norm. Which shouldn't be surprising, considering AO3 arrived at its warnings system [by surveying preexisting fandom spaces](https://olderthannetfic.tumblr.com/post/179337478579/except-that-no-one-uses-tags-like-fetishized).

So you can certainly believe that CNtW is an unhelpful-to-unconscionable level of ambiguity, but 1.9 million fanworks found it useful.

###  **#8. CNtW makes it impossible for readers to curate their experiences, since they don't know what's in those stories.**

CNtW makes it not only possible but easy for readers to curate their experiences, because it is as filterable as any of the other major warnings tags.

If you read a story marked CNtW and didn't like or even were triggered by what you got, it's because your personal curating algorithm ranked the risk of missing a story you wanted to read as more dire than the risk of seeing a story you didn't. It may be a decision you regret. Nevertheless, it was an informed one.

Incidentally, if there is one particular author whose tagging practices incense you so much you never want to see anything they post ever again—me, for instance—[the AO3 Savior userscript](https://greasyfork.org/en/scripts/3579-ao3-savior) makes this possible. Fan is a tool-using animal.

###  **#9. It's rude.**

How and why? You're under no obligation to read the stuff.

Sometimes the contention here might be that it's rude because prioritizing anything over accessibility is rude, and as established, CNtW sacrifices accessibility. That's a position I have a lot of sympathy for, even if ultimately I disagree.

Most of the time, though, I see the r-word crop up where a user is complaining about having clicked through on a CNtW fic and not liked what was on the other side. For that, I can't muster much sympathy. Even if you hate the CNtW tag and think AO3 should scrap it, for now the category exists, and if you're reading CNtW works without taking the time to vet the contents with the author or a friend despite knowing you have triggers, you're not taking your own needs seriously. And then you're making it everyone else's problem.

Some might call that rude.

###  **#10. Authors CNtW in order to trick people into reading distressing content, because they know readers avoid tags like MCD and Underage and authors are hungry for hits.**

You know what other tag readers avoid? "Creator Chose Not to Use Archive Warnings."

Do they avoid it as assiduously as any of the other four major warnings? I'm not sure whether they _do,_ but logically they ought to as much as the other four all put together. Certainly it's a tag people exclude a lot more frequently than they select for. Which is part of it serving its purpose. CNtW isn't asking readers with triggers to read triggering content. It is, in fact, specifically asking them not to read if they are not game to roll the dice on any of the four major archive warnings.

So I'm going to go out on a limb and say that when authors want to write for popularity, they're going to choose to write something popular.

###  **#11. Readers are placing their emotions in your, the author's, hands. They are trusting you with their hope and their heart, and you have a duty to handle them with care. CNtW, by all means. But if you're going to knowingly violate readers' expectations, you will need to tell them as much, either through additional tags or blatant narrative signposts in the writing itself. Otherwise, you violate the trust placed in you along with those expectations as readers are betrayed by the very story they needed something from. You're hurting us.**

If you're wondering why so specific all of a sudden, it's because, paraphrased and abbreviated, this is a comment I have actually received.

I am not a tall, handsome man. I do not have a red right hand. I don't even own a dusty black coat. I own a laptop with a busted trackpad, and occasionally I write fanfic on it.

Look, it's not that I don't want to connect with readers. I think you do not spend hours or weeks or months working on a story—on a fanfic _in particular,_ on a work in this genre that is not publishable anywhere else and by definition cannot make you any money—and post it for all to see if you are not fairly keen to achieve communication of some kind.

And do I hope that readers will enjoy that communication? Duh. If I wanted to piss off strangers on the internet, there are faster and easier ways of doing it.

But charging an author, fic or pro, with managing your emotions for you is A Lot, and a weirdly, inappropriately intimate bit of A Lot at that. It would be weird and inappropriate to try to do it with your licensed clinical therapist or a Dom(me) you'd been seeing for decades. I don't even know you.

I guess we do place our heart in an author's hands any time we give ourselves over to a story—to an extent. But some readers seem to think that an author foresees and thus can determine every emotional response readers are going to have. I can't believe this needs saying, but authors really, really can't and don't. When we read a story, we bring to it at least as much of the emotional landscape it will have _for us_ as the words on the page do. Corollary: the story means something _for us_ that it does not for the author, and something that the author cannot know. How big the mismatch is can vary a lot, but there's always going to be one. Corollary to the corollary: unless you know them in another context, you don't have a (direct) relationship with the author. You have one to the story you're reading.

That kind of psychic estuary thing that happens in the boundary layer between reader and story (or author and reader, if you like) is a place where CNtW is valuable as hell. Without knowing exactly what kind of emotional reaction you'll have to the content, the author can nevertheless suggest you proceed with caution.

So place your heart in the hands of stories. It would be awful never to do that. Just maybe keep one of your own kinda cupped underneath to spot it.

###  **#12. True, published books don't come with tags, and the absence of specific warnings is the default in mainstream media. But fandom is supposed to be better than that. We're supposed to take care of each other. CNtW sends a message to trauma survivors that they're not welcome in fandom by saying, "If you can't handle triggering content, too bad," and it harms them by exposing them to insufficiently warned-for triggering content.**

This echoes campaigns against darkfic that purport to be about protecting survivors despite harming plenty of them over their protests, and I have many of the same problems with it. Sacrifice safety wholesale in the name of freedom and you are, yes, an asshole. Sacrifice the freedom wholesale for the safety, and sooner or later you're going to find the safety isn't really there, either.

The root question here is what kinds of reading experiences deserve to have provision made for them in fandom. The anti-CNtW position believes that warning vulnerable readers is more important than anything else, including narrative surprise.

I don't.

Because readers, as well as writers, have different needs and desires— _including trauma survivors with PTSD._ Some readers want to be surprised. And as with darkfic, the readers who do shouldn't need to be survivors for that desire to be legitimate, those who are survivors are not somehow sick or wrong, and 0% of them have any obligation to disclose their status to anybody.

For personal reasons—which I am not going to specify, because _they are none of your fucking business_ —I am extremely ride or die about this. Have I read things marked CNtW I wished I hadn't? Yes. No, I am not talking about getting a little bummed out, either. But I consented to the risk, and fucking nobody will take that away from me.

###  **#13. You obviously have no idea what it's like to be triggered.**

I have received this exact accusation, and I'm betting I'm not unique. I'm not going to comment on whether I know what it's like to be triggered, because of the part where _my status and history are none of your fucking business,_ but I would like to take this opportunity to remind anybody who lobs this about that rarely, if ever, will you know it about someone for certain, because of the part where _other people's status and history are none of your fucking business,_ so the odds are rather good, actually, that the person does know, and every time you climb on this hobby horse, you are deeming that an acceptable risk.

If you care so very much about improving the experiences of trauma survivors and people with MHIs in fandom, start by not assuming they're all the same. One refrain common in the debate against CNtW is that adding some tags or an A/N up top just isn't that big or hard of an ask. Well, accepting that some fics could be marked CNtW doesn't seem like such a large or hard compromise to make to allow for some basic variations in human nature.

###  **#14. You're victim-blaming.**

I'm not victim-blaming because authors who CNtW aren't victimizing anyone.

###  **#15. CNtW makes people antis.**

It doesn't, but gosh, the purity police would probably like you to think that it does.

So many of the protests against the validity or fairness of CNtW, and specifically CNtW fics with content that takes readers by surprise, will accuse the author of doing it for shock value. These authors aren't being clever, posters scathingly announce, and their "big twist" isn't somehow revelatory. It's *clutches pearls* _vulgar_.

Now, it isn't that they want to curtail anyone's freedom of expression, you understand. By all means portray whatever you would like. But be respectful about it, if you really want your story to have the impact you desire. (What they presume that is, I don't know.)

If any of that sounds familiar, it should, because it lines up pretty well with what a lot of antis trot out about ~problematic content to begin with. Your kinky/blanket warned-for content isn't high art, guys. Darkness/uncertainty doesn't automatically make something more profound. Media doesn't have to be edgy/surprising to be good, so why not be wholesome/take all the guesswork out? Given that wholesome/warned-for stories are just as good, if you insist on writing, or enjoy reading, problematic content/"harmful surprises," then maybe something's wrong with you. If you're a survivor who enjoys it (are you really, though? Prove it. Present your trauma for inspection, so we can decide if you should be allowed to have an opinion ~~and then discard it anyway~~ ), then something must be very wrong with you indeed.

"But if someone clicks on a CNtW story and is blindsided by something in it, isn't that just handing antis ammunition?" No, no, it isn't, because they weren't blindsided—they were warned—and if that person earnestly believes it was the author's duty to prevent them from clicking, the story didn't make them an anti, they basically already were one.

"But what do authors think springing a surprise like MCD/noncon/underage/violence or gore on readers is even going to accomplish beyond shock value?"

You don't know what the author's motivation was for whatever twist you hated, but if it _was_ shock value, _so fucking what?_ You really want a "must be this edifying to ride" rule? Any time we make artistic merit a requirement for speech, we are asking to be silenced. And maybe you think you're the one who'll get to do the silencing, and maybe you're even right, but I bet you dildos to douche nozzles you won't like where it ends up.

So yeah, I bet antis would love to see CNtW go away. I bet they do want everything minutely tagged. I bet they'd think it's fab to easily find objectionable fics that might otherwise have enjoyed a bit of SEO insulation with the CNtW tag. I bet they'd thoroughly enjoy being able to report stories for insufficient or inaccurate tagging that authors are currently marking CNtW because they're worried their tags might be inaccurate or insufficient. I bet they would love to have that leverage, since the absence of DMs on this archive that transparently prioritizes fan creators' rights to free expression and has become more popular for posting fic than any social media platform is giving them blue balls on their collective harassment boner.

Fortunately, this is all academic anyway, because I'm pretty sure AO3 is not interested in removing the tag that has been the site's default warning since its inception. But even if the OTW is gonna keep the faith no matter what, playing into antis' hands is still a dumbass thing to do.

###  **#16. CNtW is valid, but there's no reason you can't put specific trigger warnings in highlightable text or in an endnote that readers who don't want surprises can check first and adventurous readers can skip.**

There sure is a reason, and it's that _the author chose not to warn_. Their motivations for doing that might meet with your approval or not, but they told you right up top that they'd done it.

For every fic marked CNtW, the same avenues that are open to you with a print book are likewise open to you in fandom. You can flip to the end, and you can ask someone who's read it. In fact, the second one is if anything far easier to do in fandom, and there is often a third option that isn't really practical in published fiction, which is that you can ask the author. They might decline to give out spoilers (or to try to guess how their content will affect you), and there's always the possibility they'll be a dick about it, but I think most authors would answer a polite inquiry in kind. If your position is that you shouldn't have to do that and you're not interested in being surprised, you're not the intended audience.

And nobody's asking readers not to discuss stories amongst themselves. (I mean, I'm sure there's one somewhere, because there always is, but.) CNtW means the author isn't willing to give detailed warnings themselves, at least in the archived presentation of the story. It doesn't mean they're trying to control how you approach their fic—or how you decide not to.

###  **#17. No one's saying any reader is owed access to every story. We're just saying facilitating access is the kind thing to do.**

The argument over whether this compromise (CNtW) should go away is not about kindness.

If you elected to tag something to make it as accessible/avoidable as possible, it was because doing so aligned with your reasons for writing and posting, not because you are kind. You may well be kind. Your kindness probably informs your writing and fannish engagement in the first place. But kindness was not the factor you used to decide whether to tag specific warnings and cannot be, because kindness is about being compassionate in the absence of other compulsion, and addressing a given story to the largest possible audience is not an act of compassion.

If you bring a picnic lunch on a day hike and you meet a thru-hiker, and you offer them some of your lunch, you're being kind. But as already noted, a story is not food. Not even if they turn out to find it valuable.

###  **#18. Readers who want to be surprised can just opt in to hiding warnings. Why isn't that good enough?**

Okay, I'm cheating a little: I haven't personally clapped eyes on this objection. But I imagine someone's brought it up somewhere, because I've asked myself the same question. More on that in a minute.

But first! Mini-tutorial time! Because a lot of folks aren't aware of all the tools AO3 makes available to us—and I'm not throwing shade; I didn't notice the feature for years.

From either the left-hand sidebar of your user page or the drop-down menu under the little "Hi, [username]!" at the top of every page, select "Preferences":

On your Preferences page, scroll down to "Display":

These options work like so:

In my case, I have "Hide warnings" selected. This is what I see when I browse works:

The site still shows me a different icon for one of the four major warnings than it does for CNtW, but I don't know which one unless I click "show warnings." Which is exactly what I do half the time, and it's way less hassle than updating my display preferences every time my openness to unwarned reading fluctuates. It's a really nice UX feature. All the kudos, AO3. We stan.

So why isn't that enough? Why is this not the opt-in unwarned-for reading utopia CNtW champions claim to want?

For one, it still doesn't answer all the needs of authors—and yeah, those should fucking matter. Not because ~~peasants~~ readers should be grateful for whatever crusts authors deign to fling their way—we don't actually need to talk about how there's not some sort of dividing line between readers and writers in fandom, right? Like, over and above the part where most of us do both, we all can agree that that's bullshit?—but because authors are part of the community, too. They're half of the communication between author and reader, so unless they're somehow foisting their work on people (no, tagging CNtW doesn't count; no, not even if you really thought you would like the fic and it turned out that you didn't), their needs/desires around speaking count for as much as readers' needs/desires around listening. And in the case of AO3, they kind of count more, because [AO3 and the OTW were founded](https://archiveofourown.org/about) [specifically](https://web.archive.org/web/20080827230135/http://archiveofourown.org/faq/) [and explicitly](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Beginnings_of_OTW:_2007-08_Comments) [to provide a safe,]() [stable haven for fanworks](https://www.webcitation.org/6lbs33K7C) [and to champion the interests of fan creators](https://archiveofourown.org/faq/about-the-archive?language_id=en#whatisao3).

Besides which, as Dreamwidth user [ysabetwordsmith](https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/profile) has said both more articulately and a lot more politely than I ever could in [this post on CNtW](https://ysabetwordsmith.dreamwidth.org/10304632.html): "Trying to force people to write what you want rarely goes well, and…more importantly, it's harder than it looks."

But I also find it unsatisfying as a reader, and it took me a long time to put my finger on why. Finally I was talking to [@chiisana-sukima](https://tmblr.co/mcVnSEgWmjbcv1UhzwMCVNg) about it, and she said that she's starting to think that what's at stake might be whether writers and readers are equals or not. She observed that "the idea that writers owe a fiduciary duty to readers—like a doctor or accountant or a parent" that gives rise to demands for comprehensive tagging and reviles CNtW as a betrayal comes out of "a framework of hierarchy in which the fanwriters would have to hold some kind of power that readers don't."

And. Yeah.

And fuck that.

So as a reader, I like CNtW not just because sometimes I want to be surprised, but because I generally want to experience stories the way the author wanted to present them. Because if CNtW is a "DANGER - HIGH VOLTAGE - KEEP OUT," it's also a "Please join me for a very special…." Half its function is to turn away those who aren't feeling adventurous right that second, and the other half is to invite those who are in.

The fic on the other side of the door could be awesome or it could be shit or it could just be not your cup of tea, but whatever it happens to be like, there's value in the invitation itself. That's true of fics that _do_ choose to warn, too. Whether the work has all four warnings and two screenfuls of tags or CNtW and nothing else, those tags are functioning as invitations as much as warnings, and the point I'm trying to get at here is that they're not just inviting us into a story, they are inviting us to experience the story _in a particular way_. That's why they're part of the communication between reader and author, and again, the depth or quality of that communication is immaterial to the stakes.

If your response to that is to scoff about fic writers taking themselves and this whole fandom lark _wayyyyy_ too seriously, then that brings me to…

###  **#19. Choosing not to warn is sacrificing other people's mental health and safety on the altar of your, the author's, ego—and there's no excuse for prioritizing your story over readers' welfare. Whatever lofty artistic goal you think you're going to accomplish with this _fanfic_ isn't worth hurting real human beings.**

###  **Who the hell, in short, do you think you are?**

If fanfic is too unimportant for authors to have the right to surprise anyone, surely it's not important enough for readers with triggers to ever want to play Russian roulette by clicking through on the CNtW tag. If it's inherently trivial and just a little bit silly, surely you'd never waste time or emotional energy being upset that you can't read it because it advertises the possibility of surprises, and you know that some surprises impact you negatively. Surely you'd just scroll right on and find another story with the tags you want that looks good. Surely even if there aren't any, if your options are for some reason only CNtW fic or no fic, that's no big deal, since this isn't a domain for anything to be taken seriously. Right?

The contradiction buried in here really irks me. One half of the argument is, "It's only fanfic, so anyone who prioritizes 'storytelling' is self-important and callous"; the other half is, "If I do not have uninhibited access to every story I might potentially like, it's a war crime."

Which is basically negging. "The product you produce is of negligible value. So you damn well better cater it to my tastes." I've had bosses like that. They were unimpressive enough. You're not even paying me.

You don't get to be sneery about art you're demanding access to.

###  **#20. You have the right to express yourself by tagging CNtW; I have the right to express my frustration at your decision.**

Oh, absolutely. I just happen to think you're kind of a fuckstick.

* * *

* * *

**The Short Version**

  * Just because you come to fanfic for a certain thing does not mean that that's what fic is "for." Fans read and write for different reasons. Mine are not more important than yours, and vice versa.
  * CNtW provides authors with, among many other things, an ethical way to subvert expectations, and readers with an opportunity to consent to that.
  * The function of warnings* is to provide criteria for exclusion. Selecting what to include on either side of the danger line is and should be up to readers—as it has always been, and as we have always managed through auxiliary practices such as rec posts, asking friends, PMing authors, bookmarking for later, noping out after the third "exhale" used as a noun, skimming, scrolling to the bottom, and applying our very personal and perhaps ever-changing algorithms to decide whether a given story is worth the risks it presents.

*As distinct from SEO tools, though obviously tags are both at the same time.

  * If I mark a story CNtW, and you read it anyway knowing any of the four major Archive warnings is a trigger for you, I'm not prioritizing my story over your welfare: you are.
  * Writing something for an audience that's not you is not a failure of compassion.
  * Much of the opposition to a "Choose Not to Warn" option ends up being intensely prescriptive about how the very people it purports to protect may create and consume creations. Since the premise is that CNtW harms fans with trauma, no one with trauma can be permitted to read or write CNtW (they must not have experienced trauma, or they have but they don't live with MHI as a result, or they have and they do but they're unable to see how callous they're being because they haven't processed their trauma Correctly, or…). This parallels other coercive bullshit from antis and purity culture, and not by coincidence.
  * Tagging is not the firewall on our freedom of expression. The principle of reading at our own risk is.
  * Using CNtW for pragmatic or, yes, aesthetic reasons is valid. Choosing not to read it is also valid. Doing either of those things does not, in itself, make anybody an asshole. Being an asshole about it makes them an asshole.
  * On one level, no, fanfic is just not that fucking serious. It isn't war or poverty, a lot of it's misspelled, and probably a majority of it is making other people's fictional characters kiss and/or screw, but you know what? In a sense we are also getting way the hell naked with each other here, precisely _because_ our ids are all hanging out. So if the whole thing matters at all, so does being able to package up our id in a way we're comfortable with.
  * That's what tags, as part of the presentation of our stories, are: packaging on our id.
  * Hey, girl
  * Gonna give you something so you know what's on my mind
  * A gift real special, so take off the top
  * Take a look inside, it's my id in a box
  * It's in a box
  * 1, cut a hole in a box  
2, put your id in that box  
3, don't make her open the box, because that is a shitty thing to do; give her an ethical invitation to open the box, detailing either the precise nature of what your id gets up to or a blanket warning that you're not going to specify, so that she can choose to assume the risk or move on
  * And that's the way you do it
  * It's my id in a box  
My id in a box, babe  
It's my id in a box  
Ooh, my id in a box, girl
  * Christmas, id in a box  
Hanukkha, id in a box  
Kwanzaa, an id in a box  
Every single holiday, id in a box
  * Seriously. Every single one.
  * Don't even try to pretend like all of us aren't on our phones while the turkey's cooking and Uncle Gene is holding forth about Millennials and home ownership, escaping it all with someone's id in a box
  * So don't be a fucking asshole.



**Author's Note:**

> At time of writing, I am not an OTW volunteer or employee and do not speak for them.


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